Highlights: IBM TechXchange 2025 – Know Before You Go!
Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Insider! Designed for IIUG members and Informix user group leaders, this publication contains timely and relevant information for the IBM Informix community.
Table of Contents
Editorial
Part of the IIUG board, including me, will attend the IBM TechXchange 2025 in Orlando.
In the next insider I will report about the conference. If you are coming, make sure you are attending the Informix sessions. We will be happy to meet you there.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
gary@iiug.org
Highlights
IBM TechXchange 2025 – Know Before You Go!
- A map of the Orange County Convention Center
- A list of Informix Sessions
- When and where to Register
- Session room layout, Informix session will be in the Lake Florence Room
- Complimentary Informix/Badge location and times
- Week At A Glance grid
- Details regarding other events and social activities.
Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board
Conference Corner
IBM TechXchange Conference 2025 – Orlando, FL, USA
October 6-9, 2025
Orlando, Florida USA
Don’t forget, you will receive a complimentary pass to obtain your Informix Certification/Badge at TechXchange 2025!
Feel free to share!
NOTE: You will be taken to the IBM sign in page to register for this event. You must have an IBM account to register for this event. There is a link on the page to create your IBM account.
Feel free to use one (or all) of these social media tiles to let others know you will be attending! Share your reasons for attending on your social media pages.
Invite colleagues to join us at IBM TechXchange 2025!
Other available pass options:
- Single Day Pass
- Community Day Pass – Monday, October 6
- Student Day Pass
- IBM Champions receive a complementary pass (you should have received an email from IBM with instructions)
NOTE: You will you will be taken to the IBM sign in page to register for this event. You must have an IBM account to register for this event. There is a link on the page to create your IBM account.
Are you having problems convincing management to let you attend? Check out our reasons to attend flyer. You might find something there to help you!
The schedule has been released for TechXchange 2025:
Tuesday, October 7
| 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM | IDS 15.0 – Unlimited and Future Proof | John Lengyel |
HCL |
| 11:30 AM – 11:50 AM | Go live with your business AI use case in just 2 weeks – stay ahead of the competition | Henri Cujass | leolo IT |
| 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM | Managing and Optimizing and IBM Informix Server using the Sysmaster Database | Lester Knutsen | Advanced DataTools Corporation |
| 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM |
Test to SQL Agent powered by Informix and Watsonx |
Xavier Escoté |
Deister |
| 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM |
Database Operations (DbOps) |
Davorin Kremenjas | Sveucilisni racunski centar |
| 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM | Externalize smartblob documents using new release of IBM Informix 15 | Vicente Salvador Cubedo | DEISTER, S.A. |
Wednesday, October 8
| 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM | Informix Encryption Everywhere Everyway | Thomas Beebe | xDB Systems |
| 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM | Proactive Informix Administration | Mike Walker | xDB Systems |
| 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM | Informix 4GL Futures | John Lengyel | HCL |
| 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM | Upgrading versions and/or migrating platforms for your Informix Database | Joseph Veleeparambil | HCL |
| 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM | Next-Gen Informix: Leveraging Cloud-Native Capabilities with Kubernetes and Containers | Kevin Mayfield | HCL |
Thursday, October 9
| 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM | All About Onconfig Parameters for Informix and PFSC (Partition Free Space Cache) Boost | John Lengyel | HCL |
| 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM | Turn Your Informix Data in Data Products | Scott Norris | Actian |
| 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Informix: Detecting and Avoiding Performance Issues Related to Storage and Multinode Systems | Vladimir Kolobrodov | HCL |
Are you having problems convincing management to let you attend? Check out our reasons to attend flyer. You might find something there to help you!
We can’t wait to see you in Orlando!
#IIUG #IBMTechXchange #Informix
Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board
HCL Informix Happy Hour Promotion
Upcoming: Actian Happy Hour @ the Hampton Social Orlando – Oct 8, 2025
If you’re attending the IBM TechXchange Conference in Orlando, join Actian for an exclusive Happy Hour Reception on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, from 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM ET at The Hampton Social – Orlando.
Step away from the conference buzz and enjoy a relaxed evening with fellow developers and DBAs over craft cocktails, light bites, and great conversation — all in a vibrant, coastal-inspired setting just steps from the venue.
HCL Informix® experts will be there, including:
- John (JC) Lengyel, Chief Architect
- Kevin Mayfield, Director of Engineering
- Joseph Veleeparambil, Director of Services
- Vladimir Kolobrodov, Performance Engineer
- Scott Norris, Solution Engineer
Space is limited — don’t miss this opportunity to network, relax, and connect with peers and the Actian team.
Informix is a trademark of IBM Corporation in at least one jurisdiction and is used under license.
Informix Corner
External Smartblob Spaces: A New Feature in Informix 15
This article is the first in a series where I will share my experience using this new feature of Informix in real customer environments.
Over the past few months, I have been working on a project to migrate terabytes of data stored in smartblobs to files stored in a filesystem, without interrupting the instance’s availability or requiring any changes in the application code. The first question that might arise is: Why do this?
Why Use Smartblobs?
Smartblobs are a useful feature in Informix for storing large amounts of data linked to a row in a table. They are typically used to store documents such as PDFs, Excel files, XML files, and others. However, as the number of rows increases, so does the number of documents, and consequently, the size of the smartblob space. In this particular case, the instance was storing approximately 8 terabytes of data in smartblobs.
Although 8 TB might seem like a small amount, copying this much data on the system can take over four hours. I am also aware of other Informix instances that handle hundreds of terabytes in a single database. But that’s another story…
This environment is a high-activity, 24/7 instance, with no administrative windows for maintenance tasks. After a year of continuous operation, the number of chunks created to store smartblobs had become problematic. Adding a smartblob chunk to a working dbspace soon made it nearly impossible to drop it. Moreover, the size of the documents stored was unpredictable, which led to uncontrolled growth in smartblob spaces.
Another major challenge was that Level 1 backups became nearly impossible to execute because Informix needs to visit all existing smartblobs to check if anything has changed since the last Level 0 backup.
Advantages of Storing Data in the Filesystem
Storing this type of data as files in a filesystem is much easier from an administrative standpoint. There are many incremental backup tools available for filesystems, and it’s possible to add new disks to an existing filesystem or use folder links to point folders to other filesystems.
Here are some of the benefits of the External Smartblob Spaces feature:
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Minimizing the size and time required for database backups.
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Predictability of the space required to store a given number of smartblobs.
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Better management of the destination and capacity to store data.
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Avoiding potential errors in the structure of smartblob data pages.
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Indirect feature: External access to smartblob content.
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Fast and reliable incremental backups using filesystem tools.
What Are External Smartblob Spaces?
As many of you know, data stored in a smartblob column is split into three parts: the pointer (stored in the table space), the metadata (stored in the metadata space of a smartblob dbspace), and the data (stored in the data space of a smartblob dbspace).
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Pointer: This is a fixed-size structure stored in the column, similar to any other column containing important information, such as the dbspace ID, chunk ID, and a sequential number. This data allows the system to locate the metadata information in the corresponding metadata area of the smartblob dbspace.
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Metadata: The metadata functions similarly to inodes in a filesystem. They link to chunks of data, and the metadata allows the system to identify which chunks contain the data for the smartblob.
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Data: The data itself is simply the content of the smartblob, and it is stored in a specific area of the smartblob dbspace, with a length indicating how much data is stored.
External Smartblob Spaces allow for storing only the metadata part, while the actual data content is written to a file within a specified folder in the filesystem. This way, instead of storing the data directly in the database, only the pointers and metadata are retained in the smartblob space.
Each smartblob‘s metadata takes about 500 bytes, so it’s easy to estimate how many kilobytes will be needed to store a given number of smartblobs. The data content, however, is stored in the filesystem and can vary in size.
Conclusion
This is just an overview of how External Smartblob Spaces work and the benefits they provide. In future articles, I will dive deeper into the migration process and how we implemented this feature in a real customer environment.
If you’d like to learn more advanced details about the implementation of External Smartblob Spaces, I invite you to attend my session at TechXchange 2025 in Orlando.
Vicente Salvador Cubedo
DEISTER, S.A.
Informix Tech Talks on YouTube
Upcoming Informix Tech Talks
Due to IBM TechXchange 2025, there is no Tech Talks for October.
Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board
Last Informix Tech Talks Replay
Replay of the Last Informix Tech Talks: InformixHQ 3.1.0 – Ajay Satbhadre, August 2025
Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel
Our YouTube Channel now has:
- 566 subscribers (3 new subscribers)
- 115 videos (no new video)
- 24,888views (449 additional views)
Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel Videos
Past Informix Tech Talks Replays
In Search of Tech Talks Speakers
We are looking for additional speakers and especially any new speakers to share your Informix knowledge with our user Community via the IIUG Tech Talks. We will assist you in preparing for your Tech Talks presentation by prerecording your session. This will allow you to be available to answer any questions that come up in the chat during you presentation.
If you are interested in producing a 15 – 45-minute presentation, please contact either Art Kagel or Bruce Simms for additional information.
Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board
Informix Training
Free Informix Tutorials Videos – a step by step approach to using Informix Database Servers are available at https://advancedatatools.com/tech-info/informix-tutorials/
RFE Corner
IBM has an RFE – Request For Enhancements website.
Please visit the RFE site to vote for your favorite enhancements and place new requests. It is friendly and has a nice look and feel.
Recent
A user with DBA privilege should be able to change the owner of a table without need to recreate it.
Request official support for monitoring Informix with Datadog products
add an option in Informix HQ to surpress alerts during HQ start up
Popular
Informix should be able to change owner on tables and any other objects (110 votes)
Backup Individual database, not entire instance (95 votes)
IBM Informix Forum Corner
Join and visit the IBM Informix Community Forum
Recent Posts:
Informix Systmaster presentation at the IBM TechXchange 2025
External backups/restores and logical restoring of logs passed last Level-0 backup
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Board
Informix Resources
IIUG Website
Not a member? Become an IIUG member and keep updated on all things Informix. It’s free.
IBM Informix Community
Not a member, join the IBM Informix community and connect with other Informix data experts.
Blogs
Art Kagel – https://informix-myview.blogspot.com/
Mary Schulte – ACTIAN https://www.actian.com/blog/databases/user-friendly-external-smartblobs-using-a-shadow-directory/
IBM Informix RFE
IBM Informix RFE – Informix Requests for Enhancements.
Technical Articles
Oninit Group
WAIUG (Washington Area Informix User Group) Tech Tips
Over 10 Years of Informix Webcast Replays
Over 30 Years of Informix Blog Posts
Social Media
| YouTube | X |
IIUG’s own Art Kagel was recently features on the Tech Sharmit Podcast to talk about his life and involvement with Informix and database systems.
Catch the podcast here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l81pLa7i-J0)
Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines
Informix Marketing channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/informixmarketing?feature=results_main
Closing and Credits
The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between its worldwide user community and IBM. The IIUG’s membership database exceeds 25,000 entries and enjoys the support and commitment of IBM’s Information Management division. Key programs include local user groups and special interest groups, which we promote and assist from launch through growth.
Sources: IIUG Board of Directors
IBM Corp.
Editors: Gary Ben-Israel, Rhonda Hackenburg
For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org or rhonda@iiug.org